Happy Returns....or maybe not!

As a parent of two little girls nothing beats watching your children open up presents from Santa.  Unfortunately there may be a time when the gifts that are opened may not make it out of the box or the tags removed.  For example, yours truly purchased a gift for his niece which, unbeknownst to me, was on her list to Santa.  Oops!  Santa was scrambling at 9:00pm Christmas Eve to make it up.

With little ones, chances are they will receive clothes for Christmas.  It may be very likely that the child either has the clothing already or the wrong size was purchased.  Easy fix, just bring it back to the store where it was purchased and get the correct size, correct?  Not exactly, especially for Jessica Falcone of Worcester.  

Ms. Falcone received some outfits for her two boys as a gift and they were too big for the children.  Rather than wait for the children to grow into them she decided to bring them back to "The Children's Place" and get the correct size or store credit if they did not have the right size.  She did not ask for cash.  Her return was "denied".  The reason for denial was not what you think it was.  The denial was because she had made "too many returns".  I have never heard of that and how do they know she made too many returns if she did not have a receipt.  According to Ms. Falcone they knew because they scanned her license and that's what came up.  Creepy!!!

Ms. Falcone decided to call the customer service number and it was the same result. "The man was extremely rude and even had the gall to hang up on me" Falcone said.  "I am supposed to just keep the items now and they don't even fit my children, because I reached a return limit? I am so disappointed."

Ms. Falcone then decided to post her displeasure on Facebook.  The Children's Place responded and asked her to provide more information.  Even though they were very polite, their tune did not change and their request was even more ridiculous.  The representative asked Ms. Falcone to provide:

Store where the purchase was made, date of the transaction, estimated time of the purchase, amount of the transaction and payment method (if payment method was a credit/debit/gift card, please include the last four digits of the card). 

"It is utterly embarrassing to call the person who bought the clothes and ask her soooo many questions about the purchase.  They even want an estimated time of transaction??" she said

Nothing says thank you like getting the third degree about the purchase and if you can please provide me some of your credit card information.

I understand that retail stores need to have stringent return policies because of theft and fraud, but this is insane.  The representative was right, The Children's Place has a return policy that states "We reserve the right to limit returns regardless of receipt." What does that even mean?  When it comes to children's toys and clothes there needs to be some leniency around the holidays, no cash needs to be exchanged, but a swap should be allowed.

In a Christmas season where there was one of the largest credit breaches this country has seen, shoppers will be more on edge next year and if companies want to keep them they need to work with them, not against them.  The Children's Place needs to do the right thing and allow Ms. Falcone to exchange the gifts.  This is about doing the right thing, not Ms. Falcone's shopping tendencies.

They are just lucky my wife wasn't returning anything.  It would not have been pretty.

3D

If you don't take it from me, ask my wife